EP 319 Lawrence Cahoone on Emergence and Natural Order

Jim talks with Lawrence Cahoone about his book The Orders of Nature and his systematic approach to naturalist philosophy. They discuss fallibilist & local metaphysics, objective relativism, the rejection of simples, Jim's materialism which grants emergence first-class existence, Wimsatt's notion of emergence & nonaggregativity, downward causation & pruning rules, natural complexes, Aristotle's four causes & the use of purpose in biology, the distinction between teleonomy & teleology, the five orders of nature (physical, material, biological, psychological & cultural), characteristic time scales in emergence theory, why particular disciplines coevolved in intellectual traditions, Erik Hoel's theory about emergence having the highest causal power, natural religion & the fine-tuned constants of the universe, the choice between multiverse explanations & a single ground of nature, Darwin's views on divine purpose, comparisons to deists like Spinoza & Einstein, and much more.